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Deathbed Regret And The Puritan Work Ethic

By now you probably heard of the story of deathbed regrets. Bronnie Ware was an Australian hospice nurse. She worked with many patients during their last days. She summarized her patients’ deathbed regrets in a blog post, which she then turned into a book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The story went viral when it got publicized by The Guardian and Huffington Post and the like.

Number two on the top five regrets of the dying was:

I wish I didn’t work so hard.

I don’t doubt that many who were dying said that. The question is whether this is actionable. In other words, knowing that many regretted having worked so hard when they were dying, should you not work so hard now?

Frugality and working hard are two tenets of the Puritan work ethic. It contradicts with this deathbed regret. Who’s right?

When you are dying, you already got all the benefits from working hard. Wishing that you didn’t work so hard isn’t going to take away any of the benefits. Isn’t it like having your cake and eating it too? If you wish you didn’t work so hard, you have to offer up the benefits you derived from working hard. Is it the trip you took with your family using the money you earned? Is it the good education your children had when you were able to afford that more expensive home in the good school district? Is it the pride and joy you had when you saw the students you taught graduate?

Not giving up anything and only wishing you didn’t work so hard makes the regret moot. To us not dying, not working so hard has consequences we must bear. Some consequences may be acceptable; some may not be.

Maybe those dying realized working so hard didn’t make much difference anyway. They thought it would lead to more money, more prestige, better life experiences, better whatever, but it didn’t. It’s like those students saying they shouldn’t have studied Chapter 7 because it wasn’t on the final exam. Before you took the exam though, how would you know? You worked so hard because you wanted the better outcomes you desired. Not able to actually achieve the desired outcomes doesn’t make working so hard a bad move prospectively.

Maybe some were dying at an younger age than they expected. They weren’t able to enjoy enough of the fruits of their hard work. In other words they overshot by working so hard. Again, if you knew you were going to die young, of course not working so hard would still be good enough. The question is, how do you work just hard enough to achieve what you actually need and not one bit more? Not knowing when you will die makes it difficult. Not working so hard and betting you will die young doesn’t seem to be a good strategy to me.

It’s good to strike a balance between working hard and living a life. However, because you don’t know what makes a difference or not, or how much you actually need before you die, more likely than not you will end up working harder than absolutely necessary. Some parts of working so hard will appear wasted when you look back. Those who said they wished they didn’t work so hard weren’t wrong. They just had hindsight we can’t have now, at the time we are deciding how hard we should work.

For this reason I say the deathbed regret isn’t actionable. Some of your efforts will appear wasted. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make the effort to begin with.

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Harry, your points are reasonable. One other thought: We might infer the proper balance between more and less work if there were a counterbalancing subset of deathbed regrets that went something like “I wish I had worked more so that I could have afforded a better life for my family.” I haven’t read the book, but I’m guessing that one doesn’t make the list of 5 regrets.
An analog to the worked-too-much regret might be the “Should have spent my money while I could enjoy it” regret. I’ve set a spending target for travel to overcome my natural inclination not to spend.

Work hard at something you enjoy and have no regrets. During life don’t spend time regretting anything, just know what you can control and what you cannot control. Focus on what you can control and accept the fact you may not always get it right. When you don’t get it right, look foreword to the next thing without regrets. When dying it is hard to look foreword unless you have accepted a belief that allows you to do so.

An insightful post, thanks. Deathbed regrets also cannot incorporate the benefits of hard work for the next generation. Yes, each generation must make its own success and fortune. However, one never knows how a legacy to the next generation could help in a time of a special needs child, disability, chronic unemployment etc. Some sort of safety net for one’s children and grandchildren is a worthy reason to work.

Excellent article, Harry! You tease out the cognitive bias of the regret very nicely. I may be able to make it actionable in this sense: The marginal effort one puts in “hard work” may not pay off to the degree one expects it to. Better check in to see what risk/ bad outcomes are we really trying to prevent from happening and how those might be rationally mitigated beyond working hard.

I have thought of this for a number of years, since I first heard it. For a person who formerly had no boundaries around his work life, I now insist on them. It mostly works.

Instead of in my 30s and 40s when I was unconsciously a workaholic, I make the effort to be more ‘present’ when I’m with my family. When I was younger and on vacation, I would too often make the choice to stay in the condo when my family went to the pool or Disney. “You can’t take it with you” is about spending too little during life, while “You can’t get those years back” is about spending too little time with loved ones during life (or pursuing a passion). I think the latter is the larger mistake.

I am still a hard worker, but after much reflection (and candidly some ‘2 steps forward, 1 step back’ attempts) I am making my life more of the priority than my job. There are times when work comes first, but it’s not every time anymore. My regret now is that I didn’t do this when my kids were small. My great joy is that I did it before they were fully grown. A side benefit is that my bond with my wife, always strong but frequently taken for granted, has been strengthened. Our life after work and kids, once something I dreaded (what? no purpose!?!), is now something we are both eagerly anticipating.

I agree that these 5 regrets aren’t directly actionable, but they offer some perspective on what people tend to regret when they are on their deathbed.
My wife has, several times, called me to ask me to come home already because I was still in the office. When that happens, I usually answer that “it really isn’t that late already, I need a few more minutes (usually goes for at least 1h)”. Now knowing that people on their deathbed have this as a #2 regret, that makes perfect sense. I can see how working late 1 night is ok, but doing this for 45 years might have unreasonable consequences for, usually, very little tangible effects.
Thanks for the post and the source, this was great insight!

I had pretty much the opposite reaction to yours. I think this idea could be a sort of mantra for those looking to retire early.

e.g. “Is it the trip you took with your family using the money you earned?”

Flip that on its head. Am I better off retiring at 45 with $2 million and spending time with my family travelling or should I keep working hard until 60 hoping to amass a much larger net worth? Should I be working extra hours now in my 30s or spending more time with my children while they’re young. There’s no universal right answer, but I am reminded of a reminiscence of Kurt Vonnegut:

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!

I’d like to think I fall into the category of people who a capable of having “enough” money. For me, the idea of early retirement and investing has not been about luxury. Instead, I value the ability to be financially secure enough to spend more time with family and perhaps travelling on occasion.

I always assumed the sentiment was towards people that worked so hard they didn’t stop enough to take life in, didn’t “stop to smell the roses” enough maybe they missed a big part of their kids lives. Currently in my life, I feel like not knowing what i want to do will haunt me later in life. My plan is vague and I’m more going with the flow than precise planning and execution.

I would suggest that the basic regret is not that the individual physically or intellectually worked so hard, but rather that work was the priority in his life taking time from family, religion, recreation, etc. They regret missing out on the satisfaction of having enjoyed a balanced life.

Dean I agree. I think this is the idea Harry gets wrong when he concludes it’s not actionable. We can and should learn from the mistakes of others. I say this as a person that happily retired 6 years early.

I would like to preface this by saying I have not read the book and only the Huffington Post, the Guardian article and the AARP articles. I think it is great that Bronnie Ware turned her hospice experience in a book, that got so much attention. I think this says more about our culture than about the wisdom of her observations.

Personally where I am now in my life ( 60) my greatest regret ( big word) is that I did not go all out when I was in my teens, twenties and thirties work and career wise. I ended up working hard anyway, but if I had taken greater risks and been more committed in the outcome, I may have been happier ( I am an 8 on the happiness scale now).

I think it is false choice career versus family. If you are committed to both you can make the time you have for each worthwhile. You have to be “present”. Quality time over quantity.

hm while you make reasonable arguments about the difficulty of not having that hindsight now which makes this common regret hard to act on, I think your arguments revolve around a rather limited understanding/scope of what the “I wish I didn’t work too hard” encompasses.

From my understanding, it’s not just that one wishes that ze didn’t work as hard, it’s more that they wish they had spent more quality time, especially with the loved ones instead of working for someone else. In that context, some of the consequences that you listed may pale to what could’ve been gained by spending some more quality time with the loved ones. For example, I doubt any parents would die thinking they wish they worked harder/made more money to afford their kids to go to better schools IF they managed or prioritized to have great memories/relationship with their kids.

Paraphrasing a quote I once heard, no matter what you do in life you will have regrets. It is a normal human emotion in most people. While I cannot say have have conquered regrets, I try to remember sunk costs and move on. Learn from your past but do not allow the negative emotion of regret.

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